The Vietnamese Refugee Who Won William Jefferson's Seat
In 2008, in one of the most improbable election results in American history, a Vietnamese refugee named Anh "Joseph" Cao defeated nine-term Democratic congressman William Jefferson in New Orleans' 2nd Congressional District—a district so heavily Democratic that a Republican winning it was like a snowstorm in August. Cao became the first Vietnamese American to serve in Congress, and his story is one of the most remarkable immigrant narratives in the city's long history of remarkable immigrant narratives.
Cao was born in Saigon in 1967, the fifth of eight children. His father was a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army. When Saigon fell in 1975, his father was captured and sent to a re-education camp, where he would spend seven years. Eight-year-old Cao fled Vietnam with two siblings and an uncle, part of the desperate exodus of refugees that followed the war. His mother stayed behind with five other children, separated from her husband and her fleeing children simultaneously.
The family eventually reunited in the United States, settling first in Texas. Cao threw himself into education with the intensity of someone who understood that knowledge was the one thing that couldn't be taken from him. He earned a physics degree from Baylor, a philosophy master's from Fordham, and a law degree from Loyola University in New Orleans. He became an immigration lawyer and community activist, working with Vietnamese refugees and hurricane victims in the New Orleans area.
His congressional victory was a perfect storm of circumstances. Jefferson was under federal indictment for the freezer money scandal, Cao's Vietnamese American community in New Orleans East was energized, and Hurricane Gustav had disrupted early voting in ways that depressed Democratic turnout. Cao won with fifty percent of the vote in a district that was twenty-eight points more Democratic than the national average. It was named one of America's top ten political upsets of 2008.
In Congress, Cao proved to be an independent voice. He was a moderate Republican who broke with his party on healthcare and LGBTQ+ issues, voting his conscience rather than the party line. In a political era of rigid partisanship, Cao was an anomaly—a man whose life experience had taught him that rigid ideologies were less useful than compassion and pragmatism.
He served one term, losing to Cedric Richmond in 2010 when the district's overwhelming Democratic tilt reasserted itself. But his single term was historic—proof that the American Dream, for all its flaws, could still produce a moment where a child refugee from a war-torn country could stand in the halls of Congress and represent the people of New Orleans.
Joseph Cao's story is a New Orleans story because New Orleans has always been a city of refugees—French, Spanish, Haitian, Irish, Italian, Vietnamese. Each wave of newcomers has added something to the city's culture and character. Cao added something rare: a reminder that the most American thing you can do is flee tyranny, start over, and serve.
Leave a comment
All comments are moderated before being published.
This site is protected by hCaptcha and the hCaptcha Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.